240 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Oct. 19, 1883. 



and sleeping by the side of a dead •wolf, from whose 

 ravenous maw the faithful Gellert had delivered it 1 Most 

 of us, in our visits to North Wales, have stood \>y Gellert's 

 grave at Beddgelert, little suspecting that the afl'ecting 

 story occurs in the folk-lore of nearly every Aryan people, 

 and of several non- Aryan races, as the Egyptians and 

 Chinese. 



Probably it comes to us as many other tales have come, 

 through collections like the well-known " Gesta Romano- 

 rum," compiled by mediivval monks for popular entertain- 

 ment. In the version given in that book, the knight who 

 corresponds to Llewellyn, after slaying his dog, discovers 

 that it had saved his child from a serpent, and thereupon 

 breaks his sword and departs on a pilgrimage to the Holy 

 Land. But the monks were no inventors of such tales ; 

 they recorded those that came to them through the pil- 

 grims, students, traders, and warriors who travelled from 

 West to East and from East to West in the Middle Ages, 

 and it is in the native home of fable and imagery, the 

 storied Orient, that we must seek for the earliest forms of 

 the Gellert legend. In the Panchatantra, the oldest and 

 most celebrated Sanskrit fable Ijook, the story takes this 

 form : — An infirm child is left by its mother while she goes 

 to fetch water, and she charges the father, who is a 

 Brahman, to watch over it. But he leaves the house to 

 collect alms, and soon after this a snake crawls towards 

 the child. In the house was an ichneumon, a creature 

 often cherished as a house pet, who sprang at the snake 

 and throttled it. When the mother came back, the ichneu- 

 mon went gladly to meet her, his jaws and face smeared 

 with the snake's blood. The horrified mother, thinking it 

 had killed her child, threw her water-jar at it, and killed 

 it ; then seeing the child safe beside the mangled body of 

 the snake, she lieat her breast and face with grief, and 

 scolded her husband for leaving the house. 



We find the same story, with the slight difference 

 that the animal is an otter, in a later Sanskrit collection, 

 the Hitopadesa, but we can track it to that fertile source 

 of classic and medieval fable, the Buddhist Jatakas, or 

 Birth Stories, a very ancient collection of fables, which, 

 professing to have been told by Buddha, narrates his ex- 

 ploits in the -5-50 births through -nhich he passed before 

 attaining Buddhahood. In the Vinaya Pitaka of the Chinese 

 Buddhist collection, which, according to Mr. Beal, dates 

 from the fifth century a.d., and is translated from original 

 scriptures supposed to have existed near the time of Asoka's 

 council in the third century b c, we have the earliest 

 extant form of the tale. That in the Panchatantra is 

 obviously borrowed from it, the differences being in un- 

 important detail, as, for example, the nakula, or mon- 

 goose, is killed by the Brahman on his return home, the 

 wife having neglected to take the child with her as bidden 

 by him. He is filled with sorrow, and then a Deva con- 

 tinues the strain : — 



Let there be due thought and consideration, 

 Give not way to hasty impulse, 

 By forgetting the claims of true friendship 

 Ton may heedlessly injure a kind heart (person) 

 As the Brahman killed the nakula. 



The several versions of the story which could be cited 

 from German, Russian, Persian, and other Aryan folk- 

 lore, would merely present certain variations due to local 

 colouring and to the inventiveness of the narrators or 

 transcribers ; and, omitting these at the demand of space, 

 it will suffice to give the Egyptian variant or corresponding 

 form, in which the tragical has given place to the amusing, 

 save, perhaps, in the opinion of the Wall. This luckless 

 person "once smashed a pot full of herbs which a cook had 

 prepared. The exasperated cook thrashed the well-inten- 



tioned but unfortunate Wali within an inch of his life, 

 and when he returned, exhausted with his efforts at 

 belabouring the man, he discovered among the herbs a 

 poisonous snake." 



In pointing to the venerable Buddhist Birth Stories as the 

 earliest extant source of Aryan fables, it should be added 

 that these were with Buddha and his disciples the favourite 

 vehicle of carrying to the hearts of men those lessons of 

 gentleness and tenderness towards all living things which 

 are a distinctive feature of that non-persecuting religion, 

 and thus of diflusing a spirit which would have us 



Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 

 With sorrow of the meanest thing that lives. 



THE HIMALAYAS AND THE ALPS.* 



IX TWO PARTS.— PART I. 



"YT/^E can, in a measure, exemplify the structure of the 

 T I Himalayas by that of the bones of the right hand, 

 with fingers much elongated and stretched wide apart, of 

 which the wrist and back may represent the broader belt 

 of granitic rocks of the eastern area, the thumb and fingers 

 the more or less continuous ridges of the N.W., some less 

 prolonged than others to the north-west, such as the Chor 

 axis, which may be represented by the thumb, terminating 

 on the southern margin near the Sutlej. The left hand 

 placed opposite will represent the same features to the 

 west of the Indus. We may further suppose the intervals 

 or long basins between the fingers to be filled with sedi- 

 mentary deposits, and the fingers then to be brought closer 

 together, producing a crushing and crumpling of the strata. 

 Conceive at the same time that an elevation or depression, 

 first of one or more of the fingers, then of another or of 

 the whole hand has taken place, and you are presented with 

 very much what has gone on upon a grand scale over this 

 vast area. 



As these changes of level have not taken place along the 

 whole range from east to west in an equal extent, but upon 

 certain transverse or diagonal lines, undulations more or 

 less great liave been the result, and some formations have 

 attained a higher position in some places than in others, 

 producing, very early in the history of these mountains, a 

 transverse system of drainage lines, leading through the 

 long axial ridges. 



The last eflbrts of these rising, sinking, and lateral 

 crushing, and very slowly acting forces, are to be seen 

 at the southern face of these mountains in the ter- 

 tiary strata that make up the sub-Himalayan axis 

 (Sivalik), a topographical feature which is most striking by 

 reason of its persistence and uniformity for some 1,600 

 miles ; for, although a similar and synchronal elevation of 

 the Alps has taken place, the same regularity of oro- 

 graphical features has not been the result, most probably 

 from the difference in the original outline of deposition in 

 the latter area. From Assam on the east to the Punjab en 

 the west, bending round and extending to Scinde, this 

 fringing line of parallel ridges is found at the base of the 

 Himalayas, sometimes higher sometimes wider, often form- 

 ing elliptical valleys. Only in one part of the belt east of 

 the Teetsa are they absent altogether, and for a distance of 

 fifty miles the metamorphic rocks rise directly from the 

 plains of India, a feature representing a great break — the 

 correct interpretation of which will tell us very much of 

 the past history of these mountains. These formations are 

 of vast thickness, and in the Punjab, where they attain 



* From the address by Col. Godwin Austen, president of the 

 Geological section, British Association. 



